South Asia Daily

Hannity’s Freudian slip with Prejean

A note to my readers: This post is a compelling example of how much unproductive time I have these days. I have no basis, other than my lascivious mind and some unverifiable psychological and body language analysis, to write what I do here. I am not qualified either in psychoanalysis or body language. All my conclusions are just hokum.

The jacket of Carrie Prejean's book 'Still Standing'

I cannot help thinking that Sean Hannity is fantasizing throughout this interview about the content of the "sex tape" that he is interviewing former Miss California Carrie Prejean about. Never mind trivial details such as the professional conflict of interest arising out of the fact that he is interviewing someone about a book that he wrote a foreword to. After all he is Sean Hannity and he is on Fox News.

The content of the tape, obtained by TMZ but not broadcast out of editorial discretion, are not known but anyone with a minimally functional mind can imagine what it must be. It features a beautiful teenager by herself doing what teenagers do in their private world in front of a camera.

To me a telltale clue as to Hannity's private thoughts comes early on in the conversation about the tape. After saying that it was the biggest mistake of her life (so far) Prejean says,

"It is embarrassing and humiliating to be talking about this now on national TV."

Rather than helping an embarrassed young woman out of her quandary, Hannity has this to say:

"It would be really embarrassing if it was me but..I am making light of it."

Yes Sean, it would be really embarrassing if it was you. I think the fact that he trails off after 'but' is Freudian and fraught with meaning.

There is something about that response and the way it came out with accompanying facial expression that made me curious. Notice this expression immediately after Hannity says "It would be really embarrassing if it was me but…"

Implicit warning from an anonymous “scholar”

 

"India may have forgotten the lesson of 1962, when its repeated provocation resulted in military clashes," a scholar told the Global Times anonymously, warning, "India is on this wrong track again."

When a source, and that too a "scholar" to boot, has to issue this implicit warning anonymously you know something is not entirely convincing.

The anonymous scholar's comment came in response to the ongoing visit of the Dalai Lama to Tawang, a Buddhist monastery town that is part of the northeast Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh which China claims is southern Tibet. Unless it is a Chinese government source whose utterances can have a chilling effect on India-China relations, I do not see why such a warning should not be attributed by name. And I do not see why scholars should issue warnings on behalf of any government.

The same newspaper quotes another scholar, this time by name as saying something that sounds at least plausible.

"The Dalai Lama went to southern Tibet at this critical moment probably because of pressure from India," Hu Shisheng, a researcher of Southern Asian studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, told the Global Times Sunday. "By doing so, he can please the country that has hosted him for years."

I am not suggesting for a moment that this is what happened but for a researcher this is an acceptable speculation to indulge in.

India's Minister of State for External Affairs (which really means a deputy foreign minister) Shashi Tharoor chose to respond to the speculation and, in the process gave the researcher more importance than he probably deserves and expects. Of course, Tharoor's response came across rather testy. I am sure it was unintentional.

"The Dalai Lama is free to travel anywhere in India... I have not heard the suggestion comes from us as we do not deal with the spiritual travels of spiritual leaders. He has to visit his flock as he sees fit," Tharoor said.

Still understanding Pakistan

One defining feature of Pakistan's ruling elite has been that daggers are always drawn. There is no telling who might be out to settle scores with whom. When they are not settling scores, they are making deals. At a superficial glance Pakistan seems like a society in a permanent deal making or backstabbing mode. And deeper scrutiny merely confirms that impression.

I have now been engaged with Pakistan in some capacity or the other since the early 1990s. I claim no expertise on the country but over the years one has developed a certain accurate reading of the broad trends. It was with this consciousness that I was reading a Seymour M. Hersh's latest report on Pakistan in the New Yorker. "Defending the Arsenal—Are Nuclear Weapons Safe in Pakistan" is the theme of the story.

As always Hersh does a thorough and credible job but as always Pakistan continues to escape any definite conclusion as to where it might be headed. The piece makes me no wiser about this fractured country than I have been since the early 1990s. Perhaps the media needs a new vantage point, the vantage point of the young in Pakistan.

I was struck by a few comments in the piece. One is from former President Pervez Musharraf, who now lives in exile in London. I had written sometime ago how some Pakistani leader or the other is always in exile till such time as they make a deal. They return after that so that they can polish their dagger all over again.

Here is what Musharraf has to say about the man who replaced him as president: "Asif Zardari is a criminal and a fraud. He'll do anything to save himself. He's not a patriot and he's got no love for Pakistan. He's a third-rater."

For a man in exile after coming to power in a coup, it might seem a bit incredible to say that an adversary will "do anything to save himself." I must let that pass because there is no point on reflecting on such contradictions in a country which thrives on such contradictions.

There is another colorful comment from Shaheen Sehbai, a senior editor of the newspaper International, which struck me. Shaheen has been quoted by Hersh as saying that Zardari's "problem is that he's besieged domestically on all sides, and he thinks only the Americans can save him," and, as a result, "he'll open his pants for them." The image of Zardari opening his pants for the Americans is a telling one and, in a cruel way, quite hilarious. I have a tendency to literalize such figures of speech. You should try it sometime. It is quite entertaining.

The best line of Hersh's story comes from Sultan Amir Tarar, "known to many as Colonel Imam," who "is the archetype of the disillusioned Pakistani officer."

Hersh writes: "Tarar spent eighteen years with the I.S.I. (Inter Services Intelligence) in Afghanistan, most of them as an undercover operative. In the mujahideen war against the Soviet Union, in the eighties, he worked closely with C.I.A. agents, and liked the experience. Tarar lamented the fact that the Americans abandoned the Pakistanis after the Soviet withdrawal. It is in this context that he came up with an arresting line. "When I asked if he'd seen "Charlie Wilson's War," the movie depicting that abandonment and a Texas congressman's futile efforts to change the policy, Tarar laughed and said, "I've seen Charlie Wilson. I didn't need to see the movie."

Dalai Lama in Tawang

 

The Dalai Lama (Pic: www.dalailama.com)

In visiting Tawang this Sunday, the Dalai Lama will come the closest he has ever been in the past 50 years to Lhasa, a city he was forced to flee in 1959. Lhasa is barely 316 miles away from this Tibetan Buddhist center in the northeastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. Without the mountainous terrain he could have finished that journey in less than five hours.

Although the purpose of the Dalai Lama's visit to Tawang is entirely nonpolitical, that is precisely what makes it so politically charged within the complex dynamic of India-China relations. That the Chinese border is barely 26 miles from the place the Buddhist leader is visiting makes this symbolism so palpably offensive for Beijing. When you consider that it was through this region that a 24-year-old Tenzin Gyatso entered India dressed up as a Chinese soldier in April, 1959, it gives you a fair idea why China is profoundly unhappy at the visit.

It is probably unprecedented that so much Indian nationalism, mostly implicit, has coalesced around a visit anywhere by the Dalai Lama inside the country. Syed Zarir Hussain, a correspondent of the IANS, reports: "The writing on the wall is loud and clear: the Dalai Lama's week-long visit to Arunachal Pradesh beginning Sunday is a rebuff to Chinese claims over this frontier region."

Syed says, "Banners apart, the Indian tricolor (as the Indian flag is referred to) fluttering alongside Tibetan prayer flags in vantage locations, including the monastery, sum up the local ire against Beijing's claims to Arunachal Pradesh and the stiff opposition to the Dalai Lama's visit to the region.

"We are Indians and will continue to be with India no matter what the circumstances are," thundered Norbu Lama, a young Buddhist monk.

The idea to hoist Indian flags was a deliberate attempt to demonstrate the locals' anger against Beijing."

As if to take the sting away from the powerful symbolism of territorial assertion over a region that China claims to be part of its own, the Indian government has disallowed foreign journalists to report the story. Of course, there is no bar on Indian journalists reporting from there for foreign media outlets. To think that China is impressed by this window-dressing is to betray complete ignorance about the way it operates.

It is good that New Delhi has chosen to send an unambiguous signal to Beijing about its sovereignty. However, I would be interested to find out whether it backtracks in its future interactions with its neighbor.

Back to 9/12/01?

Major Nidal Malik Hasan (Pic: Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress)

It took Muslims in America eight years to repair some of the terrible damage done to their reputation by the 9/11 attacks. The Fort Hood killings yesterday seriously threaten to reverse the clock right back to 9/12/01. While sane America, which still constitutes a vast majority, will do its best to challenge attempts to implicate an entire community for the action of a single individual, we all need to watch out for the fringe that will reinforce stereotypes. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of stereotypes.

In some ways the America of today is a more fertile ground for communal vilification to strike roots than eight years ago. The rise of Barack Obama as president has unlocked repressed animosities and hostilities within the extreme rightwing fringe groups which could project the alleged Fort Hood shooter, Major Nidal Malik Hasan as a product of the new political order.

It is no secret that there is a constituency of Americans which does not like Obama purely because to them he is anathema to everything they want in their president. The fact that the worst shooting on a domestic US military base occurred on Obama's watch and allegedly by a Major Hassan is fraught with political consequences for the president. For fringe groups that need almost no excuse to attack Obama could find in the Fort Hood killings a remarkable opportunity for insidious exploitation.

We will hear in the coming days and weeks as to the motives of Dr. Hassan, a psychiatrist, and whether he represents any sort of trend of disenchanted or alienated Muslim members of the US armed forces. If reports that Dr. Hassan complained being picked on by some of his fellow officers for being a Muslim are accurate then the killings will only fuel such reactions.

Contempt as default sentiment

The Main Hall at the Tawang Monastery (Pic: www.tawangmonastery.org)

Contempt is the default sentiment in China's policy on the Dalai Lama. Rejecting everything and anything that he does in unequivocal and unvarnished terms is the operative aspect of that policy.

If Beijing's public disdain for the man is strong one can only wonder what they must be saying in private. As the Dalai Lama embarks on perhaps his 50-year-long exile's most controversial visit to Tawang in India's northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh this Sunday, it is causing serious strains in India-China relations.

Having run out of publicly acceptable invectives to describe the Dalai Lama, Beijing has for the first time said that in carrying out his "separatist activities" such as visiting Tawang, he is trying to "wreck" bilateral ties between the two countries. It is for the first time that China has explicitly cast the Dalai Lama as a significant factor impacting its relations with India. Its foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu was quoted as saying, "I am confident that his scheme to wreck China's relations with the relevant country will come to nothing." "The relevant country" that he so pointedly refused to name is of course India.

Apart from everything else what is particularly annoying Beijing is not just that the Dalai Lama is visiting a region that it claims to be part of Tibet and therefore China but the part through which he entered India in 1950 when he came into exile. Some 800 Buddhist monks will welcome the Dalai Lama in what is obviously a not-so-subtle message to China.

The state of Arunachal Pradesh shares a 1,030-km border with China, over which the two countries fought its only war 1962. India suffered heavy casualties and humiliation and took decades to recover from the experience. China claims some 90,000 sq kms of Arunachal Pradesh as its own, something India rejects.

In allowing the Dalai Lama to visit Tawang in the face some extraordinarily strong words from Beijing, New Delhi is for the first time using the Dalai Lama's enormous political and diplomatic potential as leverage.

 

Need some answers

It is a good thing that I do not blog to generate readership. Going by the figures provided by Typepad I average 30 readers a day, a number so much lower than the critical mass that no purpose driven person should continue to write. Realistically, it could not be more than 10 genuine readers a day because the rest just seem to be fortuitously ending up here while searching for something else. In my case the figures do bear out the cliché that I do not write for others, I write for myself. Also, that I have no purpose in life.

I am intrigued when I look at the list of recent readers that appears on the right hand column. If that list is any guide -- and it cannot be—then this blog is followed worldwide and in places where one would suspect no interest in what I write. In reality the list is merely reflective of serendipitous surfers who brush past the shores of South Asia. They never seem to return.

So that brings me to the question—why do I write this blog at all? I do because every morning I need to purge myself of the toxicity that might have accumulated during the night. Once in a while the blog allows me to write what I delude myself to believe is a compelling sentence or a thought or both fused into one. Mostly I write as a reflex action. It is somewhat like the patellar reflex. An invisible tendon hammer strikes an equivalent of the patella in my brain and some fully constructed thoughts spring out. Now convert this imaginary picture into a real one and see how funny it looks-- a hammer striking my forehead and sentences springing out.

After that sophomoric digression let me come to the main reason behind writing this post. I need to find out the following.

Does anyone really read what I write?

Does anyone find what I write readable?

Does anyone find what I write worthy of comment?

Does anyone find what I write useful in becoming somewhat familiar with South Asia?

Does anyone find what I write compelling enough to pay a dollar a year?

The last question was designed to put some of you off. I look forward to some answers.

 

 

 

Bear with me

 

I am pretty certain that during their training young jihadi terrorists are instructed to prepare for all kinds of fatal contingencies. However, one doubts if being mauled to death by a bear is one of them. After what happened to two Hizbul Mujahidin militants in Kashmir, fighting bears in the region is likely to be added to the terror curriculum.

The two armed mujahidin were killed in what police suspect to be a bear attack in a forest in South Kashmir. Gunshots were heard in the forest of Hakwas in Kulgam area yesterday. It is not clear whether being clawed to death by a bear counts as a mission accomplished in the annals of religiously mandated campaign. It is equally unclear whether such a death qualifies the two for all the posthumous privileges.

It is bad enough for a jihadi militant to be killed by a bear. What was worse in this particular case is that according to a spokesman of the Indian army the bear entered the hideout of the terrorists. The two were identified as Saifullah and Qaiser.

From the looks of it, it ought to be a group of bears rather than just a single animal. If shots were fired by the two and they still could not fight off the beastly attacks, it had to have been more than one bear.

There is a lesson in there somewhere in this tragicomic story. When I find it I will let you know.

Short meditation on Mumbai

These are grabs from 'Eclipse' a short that I chanced upon on YouTube by a cinematographer called Mark Lapwood. This self-consciously meditative short is shot almost entirely in South Mumbai. The images are brilliantly crafted. What struck me the most about it was that almost any image from it can be grabbed and turned into a telling picture as I have done in some of the accompanying visuals here.

I was not looking for any personal connection to this but the name Mark Lapwood sounded very familiar. It then struck me that Mark debuted as a cinematographer with 'Maya', a feature film that my company Literate World produced in 2002 and my dear friend and former business partner Digvijay Singh directed under the banner of Kundalini Pictures.

Some of my still photographer friends who saw the short commented while they liked the visual style of the film, they did not quite see the point in it. Perhaps the point was visual meditation. You can see the short here.

Lest we forget

As a rule I do not reproduce entire content from any source but I am making an exception. Rahul is a friend and the IANS is like second professional home to me. But most importantly, those who read this blog should read this. November 1 marks the 25^th anniversary of what is regarded as independent India's worst massacre. Some 3,000 Sikh men, women and children were massacred in Delhi in the aftermath of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's assassination by her Sikh bodyguards.

Block 32 Trilokpuri then: Hair, blood everywhere and absolutely no sound

By Rahul Bedi

New Delhi, Nov 1 (IANS) It was a sight I will never forget in my life. Two alleyways in Trilokpuri, Block-32, littered with bodies, body parts, hair and blood.

It was around 7 p.m. Nov 1, 1984, and there was no light. The only illumination was from the headlights of my car. Nobody was alive and there was absolutely no sound. It was like a bizarre science fiction movie.

It was impossible for us - Joseph Maliakan and myself of the Indian Express and Alok Tomar of Jansatta - to keep our feet on the ground without stepping on something. We literally had to tiptoe through this massacre, through this carnage in east Delhi.

When we walked down the narrow 100-metre-long street, we found a young woman, a polio victim, sitting at the entrance of her house. She was just sitting there silently and all around her, in front of her, behind her, beside her on either side, there were piles of bodies.

Her entire family was butchered but she was completely emotionless. She had no tears, she had no hysteria, she was just silent.

We then heard a sound of an infant who must have been a few weeks old. We handed him to the police.

We also saw a young Sikh, who had been stabbed the previous day, lying underneath a body. He had managed to tie his turban around his stomach, but by then had bled for at least 24 hours. We shifted him to the police van standing nearby. He later died.

We were there for about one or two hours and it was horrendous. It was just like some place where you slaughter animals except in this case they slaughtered the Sikhs - 320 of them in these two very very narrow lanes.

There was hair lying all over the place, there was blood, there were fingers, arms, legs and heads.

These alleyways were populated by poor Scheduled Caste Sikh families whose basic trade was to weave beds and chairs.

Earlier in the day, when we tried to come here, we were chased away by the crowd which threatened to kill us. I got information about the killings from a young man, Mohan Singh, who had come to my office looking completely shattered.

We didn't really believe him because his account was so fanciful and bizarre. But a few hours later, we were to realise that even his words were not enough to describe the horror, the cruelty and the carnage that had gone on there.

Later it transpired that the butchery had taken place casually over two days because people used to come, kill and go back to their homes. They used to have their food, take rest, come back and start killing again.

It was very very cold, very cynical and calculated in one way and in another way it was completely barbaric and brutal.

We went back completely dazed and shocked. I have never seen anything like that in my life in a civilised city which is the capital of India.

There were just two police officers there. They had no explanation and were completely silent.

When I went back to Trilokpuri the next day, Nov 2, they had cleaned up the bodies, killing the evidence. There was no police there and there were just a few Sikh families that were given shelter by locals, who were fearful of their own lives.

For three days this carnage raged unchecked. Besides east Delhi, there were similar scenes in west Delhi, Chandni Chowk in the old quarter and in central Delhi. If police had been marginally vigilant and opened fire, the crowds would have dispersed. I don't think there were any instances of anyone opening fire.

The fact is that the state was complicit for the first time in independent India's history in participating in a very calculated ethnic cleansing programme.

Those three-four days, I think are one of the biggest blots on the Indian establishment.

(Rahul Bedi was one of the first journalists to reach Trilokpuri after the riots broke out. He spoke to Mayank Aggarwal.)